Google Analytics introduces flow visualization
Break out the champagne—anytime Google Analytics adds helpful goodies to their interface is cause for celebration. Google is adding features that help site owners visualize website traffic and see that traffic instantly. Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of advertising at Google, announced the additions at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The Visitors Flow provides a graphical representation, showing how visitors find your site, where they start and where their first interaction on the site occurs. The … Read entire article »
Filed under: Advertising, Metrics, Social media, Web development
Study concludes more money doesn’t mean more social media activity for non-profits
The Digiwatchdog team has made social media a top priority as we go about rethinking The Chicago Reporter‘s digital strategy to draw in more readers. However, funding is also one of our concerns as we develop a plan for engaging a new audience. Do you need a big budget to foster an active and effective social media presence? According to a study instigated by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, the answer is no. Newmark’s organization craigconnects compared … Read entire article »
Filed under: Metrics, Social media
What are meaningful metrics for local web publishers?
This weekend, Susan Mernit, the founder of Oakland Local, led a session on online media metrics at the Block by Block Community News Summit. The takeaway? Surface-level metrics can be misleading, so someone at your publication should devote at least one or two hours a week to looking closely at the data. Take pageviews, for example. A seemingly straightforward assessment of an article’s reach– ‘How many eyeballs did we get?’– is, it turns out, shallow, because you no clue as to the quality of the traffic. Instead, look at time spent on site. If you have 20 thousand views, but 19 thousand of those arrived through Google and left within ten seconds of landing (i.e. bounce rate), you’re not getting traction. Watch the click path, which delineates the user’s path throughout your site, and at which gates users … Read entire article »
Filed under: Metrics